Wednesday, 6 April 2011

wrong on so many levels

Danniel Finkelstein, writing in The Times today (£) correctly identifies President Obama as an apparent ditherer, noting that he waited on Libya until almost too late, and then almost too soon took the almost unprecedented step of withdrawing US troops from a NATO operation. Obama has also failed to front up on anything international, pretty much. Danny the Fink says that American foreign policy has been like this in the past, notably in the decade after the Vietnam defeat, but does not say whether he thinks this is a good thing. He does say that if FDR had lived a bit longer the end of the Second World War might have been different, and refers to President Harding at the end of the First World War, pledging America to "nationality" not "internationality", which they might have got later too. His conclusion however is that Obama might have understood perfectly well that he was not performing as the leader of the free world, for the very good reason that he does not want that role. I think this is utter bollocks. It's not about "leadership", whatever that really means, but about power. And the US is indisputably the most powerful nation on earth. For now, OK, for now. But it is. And with power goes responsibility.

In the words of the great Lenny (Cohen) "There's a mighty judgment coming, but I could be wrong".

Maybe Obama has seen the same signals that Gore Vidal has been pointing to for some years - or maybe he has read Vidal on the American Empire concept on the way out. Put that together with gasification of domestic shale oil reserves giving the USA the chance to win some independence from being in hock to the Arabs, the worry that China has an enormous proportion of the dollars in the world. Just coolin' it...